


East of the Moon

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [14]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Animal Transformation, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10913784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Finn has just escaped the armies of evil King Snoke and Prince Ren, but the forests might hold creatures even more dangerous - or a reason for Finn to become the hero he has never known he could be.Beta by my immensely patient, ever-wonderful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	1. The Wolf

Finn stumbles to a halt, braces himself on a tree and stands there gasping for long moments, breath coming harsh with the cold air. His knees are shaking with exertion and the aftermath of terror, and the gash on his shoulder is still bleeding sluggishly, and - he looks around. He has no idea where he is, besides “in the middle of a notoriously dangerous and possibly haunted forest,” which doesn’t really help at all. There are no paths anywhere near enough for him to see - the trees press in on every side - and it’s already dusk. Soon there won’t be even enough light to keep from running headlong into the trees.

Finn slumps down against the tree he’s been leaning against and puts his head between his knees and concentrates on just _breathing_ for a while. The one thing he cannot do is go _back_ , he knows that much. Back to the castle and its cold prince and colder general, back to the cruelty he could no longer stand to witness, much less think of _joining_ \- no, he cannot go back.

But he is alone and hungry, wounded and lost, in the middle of a trackless forest -

A wolf howls.

Finn huffs something that’s almost a moan, almost a laugh. Of _course_ there are wolves. Why wouldn’t there be. He hauls himself to his feet again, picking up a fallen tree limb. As weapons go, it’s not the best - he’d much prefer a sword or a pike - but it’s all he has besides a tiny belt knife, so it will simply have to do. He’d climb a tree, if he thought his wounded shoulder would bear it, but he’s reasonably sure that between exhaustion and injury, he’d just fall right back out of the tree again, and probably break his neck into the bargain.

The wolf howls again, much closer.

Finn puts his back to the tree and grips the makeshift club hard with his good hand and tries not to think about how really unpleasant a method of dying this is going to be. Maybe he should have climbed the tree. A nice quick broken neck sounds almost restful, now.

The wolf howls a third time, and steps out of the trees into the tiny clearing. There is just enough light for Finn to see it, a darker shape against the bushes, its eyes glowing green in the dimness. Finn’s breath catches in his throat, and he raises the tree limb as threateningly as he can - there’s only _one_ wolf, after all, and he’s not some untrained peasant lad, he’s a soldier and a good one.

The wolf _wuffs_ , deep in its throat, and sits down, curling its long tail around its feet. Finn blinks in astonishment. That’s possibly the _least_ threatening posture he can imagine from a wolf, besides maybe flat on its back - and it’s not got its teeth bared, either. It’s looking at him calmly, and Finn realizes suddenly that it’s not just the dark and the fear making the wolf loom large: its eyes are on a level with his own. The damned thing is as tall at the shoulder as he is.

Dear and holy _gods_. Wolves don’t _get_ that big naturally. Finn’s seen pelts, before - Captain Phasma wears one, an albino fur that gleams like snow when the sun hits it, from a wolf she slew with her bare hands in defense of the king - and they’re nowhere _near_ large enough to belong to an animal like this one. This wolf is nearly large enough to be a _bear_ , which means - which means it’s _not_ natural. It’s some sort of mage-bred monster, one of the dire wolves that children’s tales warn about, the ones large enough to take down a knight and his horse without any trouble at all.

If it wanted him dead, he’d _be_ dead, blood staining the leaves beneath his feet. Since he is _not_ dead -

Finn lowers his makeshift club warily. The wolf _wuffs_ again, a gust of hot air that raises all the hair on Finn’s arms. And then it leans forward, very slowly. Finn can only track it by its glowing eyes; the sun has finally set, and the wolf is not even a black shape any more, but part of the all-encompassing darkness of the forest night. It’s not moving quickly, though - Finn could dodge, if he needed to, if his shaky legs had enough strength, which he isn’t sure they do - he’s being held up mostly by the tree at this point - and Finn holds his ground, breath coming harsh in his throat, until a cold wet nose nudges softly against his hand.

He jumps, even though he was half expecting it, and the movement overbalances him, and he ends up sprawled on the forest floor, a rock digging into his back, head spinning a little where he bounced it off the ground. The wolf huffs, sounding almost exasperated - or possibly amused, Finn isn’t sure - and then there’s a long furry form stretched out beside Finn, radiating heat, and Finn, shivering in the late-spring air, throws caution to the winds and rolls over onto his uninjured side and slings an arm over the wolf. The wolf huffs again, sounding _distinctly_ pleased this time, and shifts a little closer to Finn, and Finn closes his eyes and thinks that even if he’s going to get his throat ripped out in the middle of the night, right now he’s warm and lying down and not dead yet, and that is a blessing he can thank the gods for in all sincerity.

*

Finn wakes up the next morning to the faint suggestion of light and the noise of what certainly sounds like every bird in the world singing its little heart out. The wolf is still lying beside him, head on its enormous paws, eyes open, and Finn would flinch away - his hindbrain is very sure that that’s a _predator_ , one easily big enough to eat him - except that the combination of his wounded shoulder and a night on the cold ground and his flight into the forest the previous afternoon means that he is so sore that moving at _all_ , much less _quickly_ , is going to be quite a challenge. He flops onto his back with a muffled groan - oh, hey, there’s that rock again - and the wolf cranes its head around to look at him curiously.

It’s even bigger than it looked last night, now that Finn can see it properly in the steadily strengthening light of dawn. It’s black as pitch and easily as big as Finn is, with shaggy fur that Finn now knows from personal experience is far softer than it looks, and its teeth are very white as it opens its mouth to yawn. Finn glances down at its enormous paws as it stretches, and is startled to see that one of them bears an iron ring, tight enough that it looks quite uncomfortably. He doesn’t have much time to think about that, though, before the wolf rolls to its feet with an easy grace, and nudges his side gently, takes a step away, looks back at him expectantly.

Well, Finn doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

He climbs to his feet with far less grace than the wolf did, wincing as he jars his injured shoulder - if they find a stream, he’s going to have to clean out the wound and figure out how to bandage it - and follows the wolf. It walks slowly, as if it understands that he’s not in the world’s best shape, and just as he’s starting to get really truly unpleasantly thirsty, they step out of the tree cover onto the bank of a little burbling stream. The wolf steps down into it and begins lapping at the water, and Finn goes along the bank a little ways until he’s upstream of the wolf and kneels down to cup his hands in the water and drink.

The water is cold enough to hurt his teeth, and Finn drinks it down gratefully, sighing in relief as he sits back on his heels. Then he turns his attention to the gash on his shoulder - it aches dully, but the sharp pain which would indicate a _serious_ problem is absent, so Finn’s mostly worried about infection. He manages to get his tunic and undershirt off, teeth gritted, and sticks the undershirt under a rock in the stream to try and soak some of the blood out, then drenches his tunic and dabs gingerly at the gash with it. The wolf wades over and watches, solemnly, as Finn cleans the dried blood and dirt from the wound, and then, to his more than mild surprise, it fishes his now-slightly-cleaner undershirt out of the stream and offers it to him. The shirt dangles from its long white teeth limply.

Finn doesn’t really want to reach out and take his shirt from a dire wolf’s _mouth_ , dear gods help him, but he does anyway, wrings it out and wraps it around his shoulder clumsily, managing to tie the sleeves in a knot to keep it in place by dint of some wriggling and trial-and-error. It will have to do for now. “Thanks,” he says to the wolf, which nods its enormous head as though it understands.

Maybe it does. _Probably_ it does - there’s no way it’s a natural creature, and mage-bred animals are often far smarter than they should be.

“Where to now?” Finn asks it, and the wolf _smiles_ at him, pink tongue lolling over white teeth, and steps daintily out of the stream, and leads the way up the bank. For lack of anything better to do, Finn follows.

*

The wolf leads him up along the stream all that day, going slowly enough that Finn can keep up, and glancing over its shoulder every so often to make sure he is. It pauses now and again for him to drink from the stream, and once for him to go rather sheepishly behind a tree, feeling silly about being modest around a _wolf_ but not silly enough to keep from doing so. The wolf is clearly laughing at him when he comes back around the tree, and Finn finds himself grinning back at it.

It’s nearly dusk - and Finn’s stomach is rumbling something awful - when the wolf stops, looks down into the stream, and _lunges_. The spray of water soaks Finn’s tunic again, and he’s wiping his face off and sputtering when the wolf emerges from the stream and drops a fish at his feet. Finn blinks at the very dead fish for a moment, then picks it up when the wolf nudges his hand. “Thanks?” he ventures.

The wolf pants a laugh, and turns to lead the way up the bank. Finn follows, dead fish in one hand, wondering what on _earth_ is going on, and three steps past the treeline he finds himself in front of a large cave. He hadn’t even realized there was a hill there, the tree cover was so good.

The wolf flops down in the cave entrance, filling half of it, and Finn puts the fish down and spends ten minutes gathering firewood and another twenty hunting for the proper sort of stones to strike sparks, and half an hour after that he’s sitting beside a small but quite welcome fire, turning the fish over every couple of minutes so that it’ll cook through evenly. The flat stone he’s got the fish on is very hot, and he’s burnt his fingers twice already, and getting the scales off the fish with nothing but his belt knife was messy and unpleasant beyond words, but the wolf is curled behind him like some enormous backrest and he is warm and dry and not yet dead, with the prospect of food before him and a safe place to spend the night, so really, all in all, Finn is doing better than he had any reason to expect when he fled into the forest.

The fish is unseasoned and he burns his fingers again getting it off the stone, and it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten.

*

He sleeps that night in the back of the cave, on a pile of leaves that cushion him from the cold ground at least a little, with the wolf a warm weight all along his side. In the morning, the wolf catches him another fish, and Finn wraps it in clay from the streambank and sticks it in the burnt-down coals of his fire to bake, and sets about making the cave a little more liveable for a human inhabitant. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, after all - he can’t go back to the castle, and no one within many days’ travel will offer shelter to a deserting soldier - and the wolf seems to know what it’s doing, and be friendly. Somewhere in the middle of the night he seems to have lost most of his fear of the enormous creature - possibly a wolf that’s acting as a sort of living fur blanket is just not sufficiently terrifying - and now it just seems...friendly. It goes away for a while in the morning - Finn assumes it’s hunting - but when it comes back in the afternoon it helps him collect firewood, dragging branches over in its enormous jaws and wagging its tail cheerfully when he thanks it, and watches him attempt to catch his own fish with a look that can’t be anything but amusement.

It catches him a fish when he completely fails at spearing one with a sharpened stick, too.

The next few days go by faster than Finn would have expected, if he’d thought about it - he spends the mornings finding edible plants, berries and roots and watercress and half a dozen other things he wouldn’t even have looked twice at except the wolf leads him to them and looks at him expectantly, and in the afternoons he masters fish-spearing and cooks dinner, and in the evenings he settles down with the wolf a comforting warm weight beside him and tells the darkness of the cave and the wolf’s twitching ears about the castle, and the prince, and the way Slip died, and why Finn ran.

The wolf is a very good listener, and if sometimes his fur ends up a little damp where Finn’s face is pressed against it, well, neither of them mentions that.

*

Finn wakes up in the middle of the night because the wolf has moved, and he is cold. He rolls over, groping for warm fur, and his hand lands on -

Skin?

Finn rolls to his feet and goes padding out to the fire, comes back with a tiny makeshift torch, and leans down beside his bed of leaves and willow withes to see that where the wolf _ought_ to be, instead, sprawled out with a wolf-pelt half draped over him, there is a man.

Finn stands there blinking for a long moment, then creeps forward. The man’s hair is as dark as the wolf’s pelt, his skin golden in the flickering torchlight. He’s...really quite attractive, Finn thinks in astonishment.

Well, Finn _did_ know that the wolf must be somehow magical. And he’s heard of werewolves, perfectly ordinary men and women who become wolves under the full moon. It’s full moon tonight, though the trees block much of the light. Perhaps there is such a thing as a reverse-werewolf, a wolf which becomes a man?

He creeps forward another step, and a twig cracks beneath his foot. The man starts up, blinking in the torchlight, and then sees Finn and smiles, so broad and sweet and happy that Finn is staggered.

“Finn,” he says quietly, and holds out a hand. “I’m Poe. It’s a pleasure to meet you properly at last.”

Finn takes his hand, and can’t help smiling back. “Likewise,” he says. “Thank you for - for _everything_. I’d be dead without you.”

“I think you would have managed,” Poe says cheerfully. “You’re pretty damn competent, buddy.”

Finn can feel his face heating. “Thanks,” he says, a little awkwardly, and then, “so you’re a - a reverse-werewolf?”

Poe bursts into sudden and delighted laughter. It’s a _stunningly_ lovely sound. “A reverse-werewolf, I like that,” he says, beaming. “No, sadly, nothing so entertaining.” He raises his left hand, and Finn sees the iron ring clasped around his wrist, identical to the one that binds the wolf. “I’m cursed,” Poe explains. “Though I guess you could say I’m _cursed_ to be a reverse-werewolf, so you’re half right.”

“Who cursed you?” Finn asks. “And how can the curse be broken?”

Poe gives him a slightly odd look, then smiles, a smaller, sweeter expression than the broad grin he wore a moment ago. “I suspect you could guess who cursed me, given a few moments to think about it,” he says. “And as for breaking it - well, I misdoubt me any man could do that.”

Finn sits down cross-legged on his bed, propping the torch up as best he can so it won’t set fire to anything. “Tell me,” he says quietly. “You saved my life, and have been a good friend to me; let me at least hear how your curse came to be put upon you.”

Poe shifts around a bit, wrapping the wolf-pelt around himself, until he’s leaning against the cave wall across from Finn. “It’s a short tale,” he says, shrugging. “I was a servant of the Twin Rulers, back when the thrones were theirs, and when they fell to sorcery, I was one of those who took up arms and made shift to form a rebellion against the usurper and his lackeys. I had the misfortune to be caught by that absolutely unspeakable creature Kylo Ren, who found it amusing to bind me into this form, and to the confines of this forest, until someone should find the sword of the rightful kings and use it to break the ring that binds me. Said since I was so faithful to the fallen kings, my fate should be tied to theirs.” He shrugs again. “But since no one has seen the sword since the Twin Rulers fell, well - I suspect I shall be a reverse-werewolf till I die.” He gives Finn a cheerful grin, and Finn marvels at it.

“I thought the sword of the rightful kings was - broken,” he says after a moment.

“No,” Poe says, shaking his head solemnly. “It was smuggled away, along with the king’s daughter, when he and his sister knew that there was going to be trouble. They sent them both away. And I suspect, if someone could find _one_ , he could find the other - but,” he shrugs eloquently, “that will not be me, bound here as I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Finn says, and tries desperately to think of some other, less depressing topic. “Is it - terrible, being a wolf?”

“Surprisingly, no,” Poe says thoughtfully. “Wolves are very...uncomplicated creatures, but they’re _smart_. Even the little ones, here in the forest, the ones that aren’t cursed humans - they’ve got a whole society, really. And they mostly don’t eat people, you know. Deer, or rabbits, or fish - they’re very...very _civilized_ creatures, in an odd way. They know I’m not _really_ a wolf, so I’m not part of the pack, but they’re polite when they see me. I’ve shared my kills with them, now and again, so I think they see me as a sort of...benevolent oddity. And the rabbits - if I stay still enough, they barely even notice me.” He leans forward, gesturing eagerly with his hands as he talks, and Finn settles in comfortably, caught by the enthusiasm and good nature in Poe’s words.

He doesn’t even notice the time passing, so engrossed is he in Poe’s cheerful chatter, until suddenly Poe falls silent, shivers violently, and says, voice suddenly harsh, “Turn around.”

Finn does, vastly confused, and Poe makes a soft, unhappy sound and then there’s a moment of some sort of indescribable shiver in the air, and then Finn hears a noise he’s grown very used to over the last few days: the gentle _wuff_ of the wolf when it wants his attention. He turns back around to see the wolf sitting where Poe was, its tail around its feet and its ears drooping with unhappiness, and lunges forward to fling his arms around it.

“Poe,” he says, and it snuffles gently at his healing shoulder. “Oh, Poe, I’m sorry.”

The wolf whines gently and licks his ear, and Finn hugs it harder, burying his face in its soft fur.

*

Finn sleeps that afternoon, exhausted by staying up half the night - the wolf does, too, sprawled out next to him and wuffling in its sleep - and they are both awake when the sun sets and the moon rises, white glow spreading out and gilding the tips of the trees. Beside Finn, the wolf shakes and whines softly, and then Poe is sitting on the damp ground, his wolf-pelt wrapped around him, smiling up at the sky. He turns to Finn after a long moment, and Finn can’t quite help lunging forward to wrap his arms around the other man. Finn had almost started to get _used_ to being the only human for miles around, but somehow one single night in Poe’s company made the day of waiting seem unbearably long.

Poe hugs back, to Finn’s immense relief. “Buddy, hey,” he says, quietly, against Finn’s hair - grown out longer now than it has been in years, possibly ever, after so many days away from the rigid regimen of the castle guards. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Finn pulls away after a long moment, feeling sheepish. “It’s not like you weren’t here all day,” he says awkwardly, and Poe shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “I get it. It’s different when it’s the wolf. I think differently when I’m - not myself, too. And see differently, actually. Colors are very strange sometimes. Not,” he adds with a faintly wolf-like huff of laughter, “that I see many colors while I’m human, it being _night_ and all.”

Finn winces. “How can you be so - cheerful about it?” he asks. “I think I’d have gone quite mad after a _month_ , nevermind however many years you’ve been cursed.”

“No point despairing,” Poe says, shrugging. “Who knows - someday the rightful heir might return with the sword, and if I’ve let myself die of despondency I won’t be there to see it!” He flops down onto his back, looking up at the star-spangled sky, skin golden in the flickering firelight, hair a dark halo around his head. “No point despairing,” he says again, softly. “Look. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Finn lies down next to him, staring up at the heavens, hand just brushing Poe’s. “Yeah,” he agrees after a moment, and he _mostly_ means the dark sky spread out like a blanket over them, and not the way Poe’s eyes catch the firelight when he smiles.

But only mostly.

*

By the third evening of the full moon, Finn is waiting as eagerly as Poe is for sunset and moonrise. Poe is better company than _anyone_ Finn has ever met, clever and funny and sweet, cheerful and thoughtful and a little bit snarky. Poe won’t let Finn watch the transformation from wolf to human form - at Finn’s best guess, it’s an unpleasant process and Poe wants to avoid the possibility of Finn’s horror and disgust - but he joins Finn beside the fire as soon as he is wearing human skin again. Finn smiles up at him as Poe sits down.

“Baked fish?” Finn offers.

“ _Please_ ,” Poe says fervently. “Admittedly as a wolf I quite _like_ raw rabbit, but the human side of me rather misses cooked food.” He takes a large bite of the fillet Finn hands him, not seeming to notice how hot it is, and then adds, “Sometimes I think I’d kill for a loaf of bread.”

Finn chuckles. “Unfortunately I don’t have any flour, or I’d try to figure out how to make some,” he says.

Poe shrugs, the fish already reduced to bones. “Your company is enough of a blessing, buddy, believe me. Hearing actual human speech from someone besides myself - you have no _idea_ what it means to me.”

Finn winces a little. “Um,” he says, and Poe slews around to look at him, limned golden in the firelight.

“What is it, buddy?”

Finn takes a deep breath and meets Poe’s eyes squarely. “I’m going to go looking for the sword.”

Poe’s jaw drops. “ _Buddy,_ ” he says, and then shakes his head vigorously. “Nobody knows where it is! I can’t ask you to go off into the wilderness and get yourself _killed_ on some noble attempt to get this damned curse off me.”

Finn holds up a hand. “It’s not that - or, well, not _just_ that,” he says hastily. “I mean, I _do_ want to get the curse off you. But you said yourself, whoever finds the royal sword will probably find the royal heir, too. And - and I know from experience that the current prince is - is dreadful. The Twin Rulers might not have been perfect, but they _have_ to have been better than the current king, and frankly, the prince is almost certainly going to be even worse.”

“Ah,” says Poe, and winces. “You do know that there have almost certainly been people looking for the heir already - from both sides, too.”

“I know,” Finn says, nodding. “But...well...she’s not that much younger than I am, which means she’s a woman grown by now. If she knows anything of her true heritage, she’ll be looking for a way to come back. And if you can tell me how to get in touch with whatever remains of the Rebellion, maybe I can give her the army she needs - or at least part of it. And _I_ know how the current army works, and where to strike.” He takes a deep breath. “She’s almost certainly south, down near the desert somewhere. None of the spies who go down there ever come back - everyone knows it’s a sign of the king’s displeasure to be sent south. That says to me there’s someone who knows who she is, who’s watching over her. If I can find that person…”

“You can get yourself killed,” Poe points out desperately. “Fuck, it’s not that I don’t want the true queen to return - I would gladly die to make it happen - but this is all conjecture, Finn. You could end up dead in some nameless bit of wilderness and I’ll - I’ll never know what happened.”

“I won’t die,” Finn says firmly. “I’ve already survived a haunted forest and a month in the company of a dire wolf, after all.” He grins, but Poe’s expression doesn’t lighten. Finn reaches out to catch Poe’s hands. “I’ll come back,” he says, soft and certain. “I _swear_ it, Poe. I’ll come back, with the sword, and set you free.”

Poe makes a strangled sound and lunges forward, knocking Finn to the ground and pinning him there, and before Finn can quite get his head straightened out, Poe is kissing him, hard and desperate. Finn takes a brief moment to blink in surprise, and then he tangles both hands in Poe’s black hair, as soft as the wolf’s fur, and kisses back.

They break apart, panting, long minutes later, Poe leaning back just far enough that they can catch their breaths. “Come back to me,” Poe says softly, eyes gleaming like the stars above. “Come back to me, Finn, with the sword or no.”

“I will,” Finn swears. “I will.”

*

He sets out the next day, late in the afternoon, with the great black wolf pacing at his side. The wolf leads him to the southern edge of the forest, and stops just at the edge of the trees, looking at Finn with huge sorrowful eyes.

Finn bends and kisses the wolf on its broad forehead. “I’ll come back,” he promises, and the wolf flicks both ears towards him as though to hear better. “Stay safe.”

The wolf _wuffs_ agreement, and Finn turns and walks out onto the rolling grasslands, shoulders back and head high. As he reaches the top of a small hill, he looks back, to see the wolf still standing at the edge of the trees, a dark shadow in the leaf-dappled shade. Finn raises one hand in a last farewell, then turns his face to the south and strides forward, not letting himself think about the fact that he is leaving his best friend - his own beloved - behind.

He comes to a small village just as it grows too dark to walk safely, and offers the widow who lives in the cottage farthest from the village center his services as a wood-chopper in exchange for hearth-space and a meal. She has little enough to spare, but she takes him up on the offer, and Finn has thin stew and coarse bread for dinner and sleeps on a scrupulously clean hearth for the night, then spends the morning chopping what he hopes will be at least a month’s worth of wood for his hostess, who gives him bread and cheese and her blessings to take on his way, and an old tunic that mostly fits and is in far better shape than the battered one he’s been using for the past few weeks, with the hole in its shoulder and the forest dirt embedded in its seams.

Wood-chopping and water-carrying and other small tasks are enough to keep Finn fed and sheltered for the next few weeks, as he works his way south through the small villages, avoiding larger towns and the soldiers posted there. Beneath his feet the ground changes steadily from rolling grasslands to rocky scrub - the villages grow fewer and further apart, and Finn sleeps on the cold ground more often, wishing for his warm wolf beside him - and then the rocks grow smaller and more numerous until at last, as the full moon rises again, Finn finds himself at the edge of the southern desert, the sand stretching out endlessly before him.

Walking straight out into the sand is obviously a good way to commit suicide, but as Finn looks up at the rising moon - the moon which will be giving Poe his scant few hours of human form, somewhere far to the north in a deep forest that Finn has somehow come to think of as his home - the moonlight makes a path across the sand, bright and glittering, and something tells Finn that what he seeks is at the end of that impossible road. He takes a deep breath, and thinks longingly of Poe, and steps forward onto the moonlit sands.

*

The sand makes for uncertain footing, and Finn is weary from long travel and little food, but he fixes his eyes on the bright moon and goes on, stumbling but unwilling to give up, as the moon rises ever higher and the path unrolls before him.

And finally, as the moon reaches the very apex of the sky, and the path begins to fade, he sees, impossibly, a great castle rising out of the sands. Finn hurries forward as best he can, and just as the moon begins to set and the path fades at last to nothingness, he steps gratefully into the castle’s courtyard, his boots clicking on the flagstone paving.

The castle’s windows are dark, all save one near the top of the highest tower, and so Finn finds a sheltered corner, in the curve of a high stone wall, and curls himself up out of the way, and lets his exhaustion drag him under.


	2. The Quest

He wakes with the sun, blinking his eyes clear of strange dreams of fierce young women and blue-glowing swords, to find the woman from his dreams staring down at him. She is young and lovely, slender and deadly as a swordblade, and Finn stares back at her in wonder.

“Who are you?” she demands. “How came you here?”

“I followed the moon-road,” Finn says. “My name is Finn, and I am seeking the sword of the Twin Rulers, and their rightful heir.”

“Why?” the woman asks, frowning fiercely down at him.

“I seek the heir that she might take her rightful place, and cast down the usurper and his foul works,” Finn replies. “And I seek the sword to free my own true love from a curse the usurper’s heir has laid upon him.”

The woman cocks her head and studies Finn closely. “Truth,” she says at last, “and none who mean me harm may find the moon-road to the castle’s door. Come; Maz will want to meet you.”

Finn rises and follows the woman into the castle, where there is a second woman waiting for them. She is tiny and orange, which means, Finn assumes, that she is one of the fey folk, those unknowable powers which interfere so unpredictably in the lives of men. She looks him up and down and nods.

“Welcome, young hero,” she says. “Come and eat, and bathe, and rest. Then we may speak of the quest that brings you here.”

“I am not a hero,” Finn says quietly.

“I have lived a very long time, young hero,” the fey woman replies, “and I have seen the same eyes many times, in many faces. You are a hero, even if you do not know it yet.”

Finn decides not to argue, because food and a bath and rest in a real bed sound far more pleasant than hours spent arguing with one of the fey. He follows the young woman through the entrance hall and up a vast flight of stairs to a suite of rooms larger than some of the cottages he’s slept in, where a hot meal is waiting for him, and just barely manages to remember to thank the young woman politely before she leaves him to food and bath and bed.

He wakes again near sundown, to find another meal and a set of well-made clothing awaiting him, and once he has eaten and dressed, ventures down into the entrance hall again. The young woman is waiting for him, and leads him to a sitting room, where the tiny fey woman is perched in an enormous chair.

“Sit, young hero,” she says, and Finn sits obediently. The young woman settles on the edge of a third chair, looking like she could leap out of it at any moment.

“Tell me your tale,” the fey woman orders, and so Finn does: his life among the prince’s guards, and the way Slip died; his flight into the forest, and the wolf who saved him; the curse that binds Poe, and the oath Finn made to bring the king’s sword and the rightful heir back to the usurped throne.

The fey woman listens patiently, and when Finn is done, she turns to the young woman and says, “My dear, eighteen years I have kept you safe and taught you all that you must know. Now you must decide: are you prepared to take again your sword, your kingdom, and your throne?”

The young woman takes a long, slow breath, and her shoulders go back, and her chin rises proudly. “I am,” she says firmly. “Eighteen years I have lived under your protection and tutelage, but now it is time, at last, for me to take up my duty and my destiny.”

“Very well,” the fey woman says softly. “Then here is what you must do…”

*

Finn and the young woman - whose name, it turns out, is Rey - stand at the edge of the enchanted castle’s grounds, staring out towards the east where the moon will rise. “Follow the moon-road to its end,” Maz told them. “There you will find three challenges; and should you manage to win through them, you will attain the sword. But be swift! You will have a day, only, for you must follow the moon-road back again tomorrow night.”

“What sort of challenges?” Rey asked, but Maz only shook her head.

“You must win through on your own merits, my dear.”

Finn has a long knife at his side, courtesy of Maz’s armory; Rey has a quarterstaff. With luck, they won’t need any more weaponry than that.

The moon rises, and the moon-road unrolls beneath their feet.

“Alright,” Rey says, and steps forward. Finn does the same. The sand is soft beneath his feet, and Rey’s shoulder warm against his as they walk - the moon-road is too thin for them to move apart, and Finn kind of likes the reminder that he’s not alone out here.

“Tell me about my kingdom,” Rey says quietly. “Maz has taught me the history, and the geography, but - you’ve lived there.”

Finn considers the question. “I was a soldier, raised to that life,” he says at last. “I did not see much of the way the common folk lived, until this last month, as I was on my way south to you. The people work hard, and are generous to strangers - but there is not much to spare, when the taxes have been paid, and soldiers are not...are not much loved, for that we are the king’s fist.”

“Ah,” says Rey thoughtfully, and they walk in silence for a while. “You know a lot of the soldiers of the current king are going to die, if we lead a rebellion,” she says at last.

“I know,” Finn says. “And - I don’t _like_ it, but I understand. Most of them - most of them get used to it, after a while. Being the king’s fist, I mean. A lot of them get to _like_ it. It’s - the officers don’t care if you take food from the villagers, or money, or even - um. Other things.” He winces. “As long as no one dies - or at least no one important, none of the merchants or nobles - well, the officers don’t care and a lot of the soldiers like being able to take what they want. It’s...sort of addictive, I think. The power.”

“You didn’t like it,” Rey points out.

Finn says, slowly, thinking it through as he does, “We had - we had as much power as we liked to do _harm_. But we could not _aid_ anyone. If I wanted a farmer’s dinner, or prize goat, or daughter - that was my prerogative. But if I wanted to give him enough money to buy a _new_ goat, or a better dinner, or a dowry for his daughter - well, that wasn’t my choice to make. And what good is power if you can’t _do_ good with it?”

“Huh,” Rey says, and gives Finn a look he cannot read at all.

And then they step off the soft sand onto packed earth, and they look up in unison to see a tower rising above them, black against the moonlight, as stark as death.

Behind them, the moon-road fades away, leaving only trackless sand behind.

Rey takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, settling her grip more comfortably on her staff. Finn draws his long knife.

“Alright,” Rey says quietly. “Let’s go win ourselves a sword.”

*

The tower door creaks open before Rey’s cautious hand, and Finn peers into the shadows beyond. There’s a faint light somewhere deeper in the tower, but not enough to see more than vague shapes, and the full moon above is not shedding as much light as Finn would normally expect. Magic, obviously - spells don’t have to conform to normal natural laws.

“Looks empty,” Rey says softly, and steps across the threshold.

Immediately, the tower echoes with a great bass roar of rage.

Finn springs forward beside Rey, raising the long knife, and turns to put his back to hers as they stare wildly about them - and down from the high ceiling comes a monster out of nightmare, a great sinuous thing like a winged serpent, with claws as long as Finn’s knife and fangs longer than Rey’s quarterstaff.

Rey swears. Finn keeps his mouth clamped tight shut so as not to scream with terror.

The winged serpent lunges.

Rey is fast, as fast as Finn - and he was the best of his whole legion at any martial task - and they leap aside as one, flinging themselves to either side of the monster. “Go for the wings!” Finn cries, and hears an echoing _crack_ as Rey takes his advice. The monster squalls and whirls towards her - whatever she did, it must have hurt - and Finn takes advantage of the opportunity to slash a great rent in the wing nearest him. The monster squalls again, swinging back around, and Finn ducks its great jaws as it snaps at him and hears Rey shout an inarticulate battle cry as she strikes again.

They keep the monster off balance, swinging its great head back and forth between them, but honestly they’re not making much headway, and the winged serpent only needs to get lucky _once_ \- and they are weary already from the long walk along the moon-road. It can’t fly - they’ve torn its wings to shreds - but it is dangerous enough on the ground, and there are no obvious weak spots besides the wings.

And then the monster lunges for Rey, mouth agape, and Finn cries out helplessly - and Rey jams her quarterstaff into its gaping jaws. The winged serpent pauses, shaking its head in bafflement, and Rey clings to her staff, trying desperately to hold the enormous monster still.

Finn seizes his chance, leaping forward and bringing his long knife down on the monster’s throat.

The knife shatters into a million useless shards.

There is a long, still moment, and Finn can see Rey’s eyes go wide with despair, and he cries out in fury. This _cannot_ be the way his journey ends!

The blade’s hilt still has a shard attached, sharp-edged and gleaming, and Finn lunges desperately forward and drives the shattered thing deep into the monster’s glaring eye.

It thrashes wildly, and Rey and Finn both go flying. Finn hits a wall, hard, and the breath is knocked out of him. By the time he gets it back, Rey is bending over him, offering him a hand up. Finn blinks up at her.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yeah, just winded a bit,” Rey says. Finn takes her hand and lets her pull him to his feet, and she leaves him to get his balance and goes to pull her quarterstaff out of the dead monster’s jaws. It seems, astonishingly enough, none the worse for wear.

“Onward,” Rey says, and Finn nods and joins her, skirting the monster’s corpse gingerly until they come to a gap in the wall, with a set of stairs rising into the dimness above. They glance at each other and step forward.

Whatever’s up there, they’ll defeat it together.

*

At the top of the hall there are two doors, and between them, two keys hanging from a matching pair of hooks.

“One each, I guess,” Finn says reluctantly, and reaches out to take the nearer key off its hook. Rey takes the other, weighing it carefully in her hand.

“I assume we’re each supposed to take a door,” she says dubiously. “Well. I’m not sure I want to find out what happens if we _don’t_.”

“I quite agree,” Finn says, and unlocks the door on the left. It creaks open ominously. Rey unlocks the door on the right, and they exchange a long, solemn look before stepping forward.

The door slams shut behind Finn, sealing him in a moonlit chamber. When he whirls to look, he finds the door has no keyhole or handle on this side - he cannot get out.

He spins in a slow circle, taking in his cell. There is, horrifyingly, a skeleton in one corner, covered with decaying scraps of cloth. He gives it a wide berth.

There is a window high on the western wall, so that the moonlight falls in to illuminate the cell. It’s far too small for him to climb out of, though, even if he could reach it - the stone is slick and polished, and he’s not sure he could manage to climb up that high.

The wall opposite the door is the only one with any decoration. Above Finn’s head, etched into the stone, is the legend _Beyond This Wall Lies Thy True Destiny. Choose Wisely: What Is The Mark and Honor of a King?_

Below the legend are twenty-five square tiles, five by five, each bearing a deeply carved rune. Finn leans forward, squinting, to read them. He _did_ learn Runic, back in basic training - he learned anything and everything he could get his hands on - and even if that was nearly fifteen years ago now, he remembers most of it.

 _Control,_ reads the first rune. _Wisdom_ is the second. _Power_ is the third. Finn frowns. The mark and honor of a king…

“I have to choose,” he says aloud. “I have to choose what the most important one is.” He slumps down on the floor, staring up at the runes. “And if I choose wrong…” he glances over at the skeleton. “If I choose wrong, I never leave again. That’s...great.”

He reads all the runes through five times, the moonlight fading as the moon sets over the desert, and then he gets as much sleep as he can manage on the cold stone floor - which isn’t much - and then, when the sun has risen high enough that he can see what he is doing, he stands up and reaches out and presses his hand firmly to the rune which reads _Compassion_.

The tile depresses under his hand, sinking into the wall nearly a full inch, and comes to rest with a final-sounding _click_.

And the wall slides smoothly into the floor, revealing a wide chamber, and in the center, its tip sunk deep into a block of grey stone, stands the sword.

*

Finn steps forwards without thinking, drawn by the sight of the blade which will set Poe free, and then, wincing, glances to the side to see Rey stepping into the chamber, too.

“What did you choose?” she asks quietly, coming to stand beside Finn, her eyes fixed on the sword.

“Compassion,” Finn says quietly. “And you?”

“Wisdom,” Rey says. Finn nods.

“You’ll make a good queen,” he says. “Go claim your sword.”

Rey takes a deep breath and steps forward, up onto the dais, and wraps her hand around the sword’s hilt, and pulls.

Absolutely nothing happens.

*

They both stand there staring at the sword for a while, and then Rey steps back and says, “Alright, _you_ try. Maybe it’ll like you better.”

Finn shrugs and steps up beside her, takes the sword’s hilt in both hands, and tugs.

It might as well be part of the rock, for all the movement he earns. He steps back again, frowning. “This makes no sense,” he says. “You’re the rightful heir, and we’ve defeated the monster _and_ the riddle -”

“ _We’ve_ defeated,” Rey says, whirling to grin at him. “That’s it! It takes _both_ of us!” She reaches out to take the hilt again, and Finn closes his hand gently around hers, and together, carefully, they pull -

And the sword rises out of the stone as easily as in a dream.

*

“You take it,” Rey says, and lets go of the hilt. Finn stares at her in disbelief.

“It’s your sword,” he says, and Rey shakes her head.

“It’s _our_ sword,” she says firmly, “and you haven’t got a weapon. I’ve got my staff.”

Finn can see the sense in that. The sheath for the long knife he got from Maz won’t fit the sword, though, so he has the naked blade in hand as they turn to find that the staircase down has appeared where there was nothing but blank wall before.

They go down cautiously, side by side, and their caution is apparently warranted, because when they reach the bottom they peer out to find the winged serpent, whole and hale, curled in the middle of the great dim room. Finn winces. Killing it was hard enough the _first_ time, and they have had no food since then, and only as much water as they brought with them, and very little rest.

But there is nothing for it, so they step out into the great room side by side, the sword gleaming in Finn’s hands, Rey’s quarterstaff held steady.

The winged serpent uncoils, slowly, and rises up to loom above them - Finn’s breath comes short, and he tightens his grip on the sword’s hilt - and then, unmistakably, it bows. “Hail,” it cries in a voice like thunder over the mountains. “Hail the rightful heirs, who have attained the sword!”

Rey and Finn glance at each other in confusion. The winged serpent coils itself up again, calmly. “Be at ease, sword-winners,” it says, voice a little quieter now. “You will find food and drink and bathing chambers here. Rest and recover from your trials; and when the moon-road shines tonight, my wings shall bear you back to your own land.”

Finn bows deeply. “We thank you,” he says, and the winged serpent nods and tucks its head under its wing like a bird, to all appearances falling asleep at once. Gingerly, Rey and Finn skirt around its coils, to find, as it promised, a well-lit room off to one side of the hall, with a table laid ready for them.

“It’s...probably safe,” Rey says thoughtfully. “I think we’ve passed the tests.”

“I’ll eat first,” Finn says, frowning. “You bathe. If the food doesn’t poison me immediately, you can eat while I bathe.”

“That hardly seems fair, you taking all the risk,” Rey objects.

“You are the rightful heir,” Finn says, shrugging. “And - promise me that if I die you will see Poe freed.”

“I swear it,” Rey says instantly.

“Then there is little else binding me,” Finn says. “Go and bathe, and I will try the food.”

Rey obeys reluctantly. Finn eats sparingly, trying a little of every dish; it is all delicious, and he cannot taste any of the poisons he is familiar with.

Rey emerges from the bathing chamber after a while, hair still damp, and Finn rises from the table. “I think it’s safe,” he tells her, and leaves the sword with her while he takes advantage of the deep bath and seemingly endless hot water.

There is still food left when he finally comes out, much refreshed, and he exchanges shrugs with Rey and eats his fill. “If we are waiting for the moon to rise, we should sleep,” he suggests.

“I’ll take first watch,” Rey says, nodding. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

Finn nods, curls up on the little couch in a corner of the dining room, and is asleep in moments. His last thought before he falls into dreams is that it still feels wrong to sleep without a great wolf beside him. But he has the sword at last - soon, soon Poe will be free.

*

Rey wakes Finn in the midafternoon, and Finn cedes the couch to her, eats a little more from the still-full table, and paces the room, peering out into the main hall to look at the winged serpent occasionally. It appears to be firmly asleep. On one of his circuits of the room he finds a tall cupboard tucked into a corner where he could have _sworn_ there was nothing before, and when he opens it he discovers a sheath for the sword. It fits perfectly across his back, and the sword settles into place as though it was meant to be there, the weight of it indescribably _right_.

Rey wakes as the sun is setting. The serpent uncoils as the moon begins to rise. “Come, sword-winners,” it calls. “Climb onto my back. The moon-road awaits.”

Finn is, frankly, a little dubious about riding a monster that they _killed_ not a day ago - even if it does seem to have recovered nicely - but he follows Rey out into the hall and up onto the winged serpent’s back, just in front of the wings, and holds on to her waist as the serpent goes slithering out of the hall onto the moon-road and opens its wings wide.

“Hold fast, sword-winners,” it commands, and Rey takes a firm grasp on the spines at the back of its head, and Finn clings tightly to her and clamps his knees around the winged serpent’s neck, and then there is a great confusion of wings and sand, and - they are in the air.

Rey whoops in glee. Finn stares fixedly at the back of her head, where her hair is bound up in three tidy loops, so that he won’t have to look down at the moonlit sand rushing by beneath them. If he looks, he’ll be sick, and he suspects _that_ will end with him falling off the serpent’s back, so - nope, nope, nope. _Not_ looking down.

The winged serpent carries them along the moon-road far faster than they could have walked, and it has been a scant hour before Rey calls back, “We just passed Maz’s castle!”

Finn pries one hand loose from clinging to her tunic long enough to signal approval, then goes back to holding onto the soft fabric as hard as he can. Humans were not _meant_ to be this high off the ground. But for Poe - for Poe, Finn can bear anything.

Even flying.

*

The winged serpent lands at the northern edge of the desert, and Finn slides down from its neck and firmly orders his wobbling knees not to buckle. Rey comes sliding down with a whoop, and bows deeply to the winged serpent as it turns to look at them. Finn manages to bow, too.

“Our thanks!” Rey says, and the winged serpent bows its head politely.

“My privilege, sword-winners,” it replies. “Fare you well.”

“And you also,” Rey says, and then they both have to shield their eyes as the serpent turns and spreads its wings again, a small whirlwind of sand rising as it launches itself into the air. Once it’s gone, they dust themselves off and turn to gaze north, into the kingdom which is Rey’s by right of blood.

“So,” Rey says after a while. “Maz taught me a lot about _being_ a queen, but she didn’t really cover how to _become_ one. Do we just go challenge Snoke to single combat?”

“Ah,” says Finn. “No. Don’t...don’t do that. You wouldn’t get anywhere close. He’s got soldiers around him _constantly_. What we need to do is reduce the number of _his_ soldiers and find our own army. Then, when we can get to him and the prince _without_ being slaughtered instantly, you can challenge them to single combat.”

Rey grins. “Alright,” she says. “So. It sounds like you have a plan.”

Finn nods. “I do,” he agrees. “So here’s what we’re going to do…”


	3. The Sword

They work their way north along the same path Finn took on his way south to the desert, stopping in the little villages, the ones Snoke ignores other than sending soldiers by every few months to make sure the villagers are all still suitably cowed. In every village, someone recognizes the sword where it lies across Finn’s back - the legends are strong, here in the back country, and every child can recite the description of the lost sword and the Twin Rulers, and knows the hope that someday the true heir will rise again. In every village, Rey takes the sword and Finn puts his hand over hers on the hilt and it blazes like the sun in their hands, and the villagers gather around with wide eyes full of painful hope. In every village, Rey tells the people, “I am Rey daughter of Luke, and the throne is mine by right of blood. This is Finn of the forest, and the throne is his by right of worth. We have come to take back what is ours.”

And then Finn tells them his plan, and in every village there are some - the young men and women, usually, but also often their fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles, who remember the Twin Rulers and their wisdom - who swear that when the time comes, they will take up sickle and pitchfork and axe and flail - and really it is astonishing how many farming implements can be used quite effectively as weapons - boar-spear and bow and ancient sword, and join the army of the rightful heir.

Finn is frankly astonished that they make it all the way to the forest without being cornered by the soldiers of the usurper king. He was _sure_ someone from one of the villages would run and tell the soldiers about the uprising to come. But perhaps he’s doing the people of the villages a disservice - after all, none of them have benefited from King Snoke’s reign. Some of the people of the towns, perhaps, the ones who sell food and armor to the soldiers, the nobles who grow ever wealthier on the taxes they demand from the peasantry - some of _them_ might have betrayed Rey and Finn, if they’d been foolish enough to try to raise an army from the townspeople. But not the villagers.

Rey balks a little as they reach the edge of the forest, staring up at the enormous trees. “I have never seen anything like this,” she says wonderingly.

“It’s safe,” Finn assures her. “Or - well - not _safe_ , but the most dangerous thing in here is Poe, and he won’t hurt you.”

“It’s not that,” Rey says, frowning. “It’s just - in the desert, you can see _forever_. And here -”

“Ah,” Finn says, nodding. “Yeah. Well, stick close to me, and if you _do_ get lost, hold still and call out so I can find you.”

“Got it,” Rey agrees, and they plunge into the forest together.

*

Finn is honestly rather surprised when they make it all the way to Poe’s cave without Poe finding them. He’s even more surprised to find the cave empty. It’s clearly not _abandoned_ \- he can see a much-gnawed deer bone lying beside the entrance that wasn’t there two months ago - but there’s no sign of the enormous wolf that he has come to find.

“Finn?” Rey asks, sounding a little worried as she turns in a slow circle to survey the clearing and the vast trees surrounding it.

“I thought he’d be here,” Finn says, feeling frankly lost. “I thought he would have heard us coming -”

The wolf steps out of the forest shadows into the clearing, and Finn whoops with glee and charges forward, dropping his pack, flinging his arms around the wolf’s neck and toppling over when the wolf attempts to hug back. He ends up flat on the ground with the wolf atop him, licking his face over and over again, and Finn can’t stop laughing, even though the sheathed sword is digging into his spine and the wolf’s breath smells frankly awful. “Poe,” he says, and gets his hands into the wolf’s ruff to scratch just the way Poe likes it. “Poe, I came back.”

The wolf lets Finn up after a few minutes, and Finn sits up and wipes his face with his shirt-sleeve several times, and then stands and unsheathes the sword. The wolf lies down, stretching its iron-bound paw out in front of it, and Finn takes a deep breath.

And then he brings the sword hissing down, a single perfect strike, and the iron ring shatters with a terrible sound, and Finn is thrown backwards by the backlash of the spell breaking.

He hits a tree, which is not a pleasant experience, and his vision goes hazy for a moment - or maybe that’s the spell - but when he blinks his eyes clear again, there in the middle of the clearing - in _daylight_ \- stands Poe, as human as the day is long.

He’s also quite naked, of course. Rey squeaks and whirls around, covering her face. Finn chuckles as he hauls himself upright again, and Poe crosses the clearing in a few quick steps to offer Finn a hand.

“You _did_ it,” he breathes, and pulls Finn into a kiss that makes Finn’s head reel just as much as hitting the tree did, if far more pleasantly. “My gods, you _did_ it, you wonderful man!”

“I did,” Finn agrees. “And I’ve got a change of clothes for you in my pack, too, so you can meet your future queen without making her catch fire from blushing.”

Poe’s cheeks go pink. “That’s...probably wise, yeah,” he agrees, and lets go of Finn long enough for Finn to sheathe the sword again and go retrieve his pack and bring back the spare clothes he got from Maz.

Poe looks _good_ in Finn’s clothing.

“The way you look at me,” Poe murmurs in Finn’s ear, and kisses Finn’s cheek. “If we were alone -”

“Later,” Finn promises, and then, a little louder, “It’s safe now, Rey!”

Rey turns around, grinning, and holds out a hand. “Rey daughter of Luke,” she says. Poe takes her hand and bows over it like a courtier.

“Poe Dameron,” he replies. “At your service, my queen.”

Rey’s eyebrows go up. It’s the first time anyone has greeted her in such a manner - the people of the villages all just called her “ladyship” or “ma’am” - and Finn has to stifle a smile at how startled she seems. But then she shakes herself a little and starts to grin again.

“Thank you,” she says. “But I think perhaps you’re going to be a little more at the _king’s_ service, don’t you?”

Poe blinks in confusion. Finn takes pity on him. “The sword chose both of us,” he says gently. “Rey thinks that means I’m supposed to be king beside her - two rulers, just like before.”

“Oh,” Poe says, eyes wide. “That’s - are you -”

“ _Siblings_ ,” Rey says, catching on faster than Finn. “ _Just_ siblings.”

“Oh,” Poe says again, and then flings himself into Finn’s arms and kisses him thoroughly. “Of _course_ you’re going to be king,” he says. “Who better?”

Finn chuckles. “Someone who has any idea how to be a king?” he suggests. “I mean, not to argue with the sword, but it’s a hunk of metal. What does it know?”

“You’ll be a good king,” Poe says firmly, and Rey nods.

“You will,” she says. “You’re a strategist and you care about people, enough to risk everything for them. Maz always said I was too impulsive - you can do the long-term planning, and I’ll do the court politics, and we’ll be the finest team anyone’s ever seen.” She winks at Finn over Poe’s shoulder. “And your consort can sit around looking pretty.”

“Hey!” Poe says indignantly. “I have other skills - wait - what - consort?”

“Poe,” Finn says, “I literally walked across a desert to find a magic sword to save you. Because I love you. If - I mean, if you _want_ to -”

Poe kisses him silent. “I am yours,” he promises solemnly, “as long as you want me.”

Finn smiles. “Forever, then,” he says, and Poe kisses him again.

“Alright then,” Rey says after a moment, and Poe and Finn both startle. “Shall we go and actually take the throne back, then?”

“Yes,” Finn says, and Poe grins.

“Tell me what you’ve got so far,” he says. “And then, if it pleases my king and queen, I’ll see if I can’t find some of the old Rebellion fighters. If nothing else, we know the castle like the backs of our hands.”

“Good,” Rey says, nodding. “Here’s Finn’s plan…”

*

Finn takes a deep breath. He knows this is by far the best allocation of their strengths - he laid it out himself, looking dispassionately at the abilities of their forces - but he doesn’t like not having Poe and Rey at his sides.

He is standing at the head of an army of villagers, waiting for the sun to rise and the battle to begin. It’s a rather larger army than he expected, actually. Apparently the villagers he and Rey spoke to spread the word quite effectively, and Poe’s Rebellion contacts were more than happy to help out. Finn thinks he might actually have almost as many people in his army as there are in King Snoke’s army, but of course _his_ army is peasants and farmers, not trained soldiers. If it comes to a true battle, it’s likely to be a bloodbath.

Which is, of course, why he and Poe and Rey are hoping to prevent that at all costs.

As the sun begins to rise, Finn can see the soldiers of King Snoke’s legions stumbling into line. And they are _stumbling_ , which they shouldn’t be, according to all the training they’ve been given. Finn knows perfectly well that a soldier of the King’s Order is not supposed to stumble, or fumble, or be anything other than perfectly controlled while on duty. But these soldiers _are_ stumbling.

Which means Poe has succeeded. Finn smiles. Succeeded, and not been caught - because if he’d been caught, the soldiers would know something had gone wrong. Which means Poe should be getting back soon.

So that just leaves Rey and her little party of Rebellion fighters for Finn to worry about.

And the best he can do to keep Rey safe is to make sure that _everyone_ in the king’s castle, from the king himself all the way down to the maids hiding in the scullery, is focused on the battle and not on anything else.

The sun rises over the horizon, and Finn raises the sword of the rightful heirs above his head. It catches the sunlight, gleaming, and then, apparently, it decides that what Finn is doing is important enough to help with even without Rey beside him, and begins to shine with its own light, blazing brighter and brighter until it rivals the rising sun for glory.

“The rightful heirs have come to claim their thrones!” Finn cries aloud. “Surrender, or be slain!”

And sweeps the sword down.

He suspects there’s magic at work - maybe the sword’s, maybe Maz’s, interfering from her distant castle - but as the sword falls to point at the white-armored soldiers in their ominous ranks, whatever it was that Poe and his group put into their food seems to kick in properly at last. The soldiers waver, tremble, and fall - first one or two, and then dozens, _hundreds_ , in a wave of clattering thumps, so it looks as though a sweep of the sword has felled them.

And _that_ is enough to make quite a few of the rest of the soldiers, the ones who apparently didn’t get enough of the drug Poe put in the food, turn and flee. Only the small group of elite soldiers crowded around General Hux and Captain Phasma and the prince seem unfazed. Finn smiles.

“Charge!” he cries, and his army pours forward, following the blazing sword.

*

Finn gave strict orders, of course, that any of the soldiers who surrendered, or were too incapacitated by the drug to fight back, were not to be slain. He knows perfectly well that some of them _will_ still be killed, by villagers who remember the atrocities the soldiers have committed and choose to take revenge, but hopefully enough of them will heed his words that the morning won’t be a _complete_ bloodbath. That’s no way to begin a new reign, after all.

Finn himself heads straight for the commanders, with the remaining Rebellion fighters and a decent number of villagers behind him. Several of the villagers have slings, which Finn was initially dubious about - the soldiers never trained with them - but has since learned can be absolutely _devastating_ when well used. He waves the slingers forward as he slows from a headlong charge to a more sustainable trot, and they grin at him as they begin whirling their weapons. The stones hiss as the slingers let fly, and Finn can’t help grinning back as he sees Captain Phasma go down, helmet badly dented; sees General Hux fall in a bloody heap. He’d told the slingers to aim for those two commanders in particular - without the General and the Captain, even the elite soldiers will begin to lose heart.

And also, that leaves the prince for Finn. Finn has a _bone_ to pick with Prince Kylo Ren.

The prince meets Finn’s eyes as Finn’s fighters clash with the soldiers, and snarls. “Traitor!” he cries. “That is _my_ sword!”

Finn bares his teeth - it’s not a smile at all, but an expression he knows would look far more natural on a wolf’s muzzle. “Come and get it,” he replies, and the sword blazes brighter in his hands.

Finn knows, of course, that the prince is a sorcerer, just as the king is. It’s one of the reasons he’s so worried for Rey, though she assured him before she left that Maz taught her all manner of useful spells and that she’ll be fine, whatever happens.

Finn is _not_ a sorcerer, nor has he been trained since childhood to defend against magic. But what he _is_ , is furious, for Slip, for Poe, for himself, for the people of the kingdom who have suffered for so long - and also, he has a magic sword, which has to be worth _something_. So when the prince flings what is clearly a spell at Finn, a ball of sickly green light which makes Finn nearly ill to look at, Finn steps forwards and raises the sword to block it. The sword _thrums_ in his hands, and the green spell vanishes into the blazing light of the sword. Finn snarls his satisfaction as the prince stumbles backwards in astonishment, and charges.

The prince is a sorcerer, yes, and he has trained with the soldiers now and again. But he has always known perfectly well that none of the soldiers would dare to injure him, and he has always had his sorcery to fall back on if he needed it. Without his sorcery, facing an opponent who truly wants him dead, much less one as skilled and determined as Finn -

Well.

Finn leaves the prince’s body where it falls, and turns to see how the battle is going. On the ground before the castle walls, his fighters are clearly victorious - but up on the castle wall, Finn sees Rey, alone, backing up along the parapet, as the usurper king flings spells after spell at her. She is blocking them, just barely, but Finn can see that she is losing strength. Her quarterstaff is smoking, her tunic scorched, and she is stumbling with fatigue.

And even as Finn watches, she trips, falling sideways into a gap between the crenellations and dropping her staff to cling desperately to the wall. The king laughs, a horrid sound that echoes over the battlefield leaving horrified silence in its wake, and raises his hand to prepare another spell.

Finn does the only thing he can think of, though forever afterwards he has no idea _why_ he thought it was a good idea. “Rey!” he calls, and flips the sword around so he is holding it by the blade, and _flings_ it, desperately, up towards the battlements. There’s no way it can reach her - it’s the most foolish thing imaginable - but Rey looks over her shoulder and holds out a bloody hand and calls, “ _Come!_ ” so loudly that the word seems to fill the world, and the sword rises impossibly above the muddy battlefield until the hilt settles easily into her hand.

The king pauses, looking - very briefly - worried, and Rey turns from the battlefield and raises the sword and _leaps_.

Finn can’t quite see what happens next - Rey and the king are hidden behind a crenellation - but he cheers with everyone else when Rey steps up onto the wall again, raising the king’s severed head high, sword blazing in her other hand. Finn knows that _this_ is the image everyone will remember from this day, as well they should: Queen Rey, triumphant.

“Long live the Queen!” he cries, and hears the cry taken up across the battlefield, thousands of voices rising in victorious unison.

“Long live the Queen!”

*

“Long live the Queen! Long live the King! Long live the rightful heirs!”

Finn imitates Rey’s elegant wave as best he can, and smiles at the hordes of people thronging the courtyard. Poe puts a gentle hand on the small of Finn’s back, and Finn leans back into the reassuring warmth of it. He’s still not entirely sure how exactly he’s going to manage to be a good king to his people, but he has his dearer-than-sister beside him and his true love behind him, and between the three of them, he thinks he’ll be able to figure it out.

“Long live the rightful heirs,” Finn agrees quietly, and takes Rey’s hand in his, raising their clasped hands high. The cheering redoubles, a wave of sound louder than anything Finn’s ever heard before, and he sways a little before it, Poe’s warm hand helping to keep him upright, and greets his destiny with a broad and sun-bright smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter updates Wednesday and Friday.
> 
> I'm imaginarygolux on tumblr; drop on by!


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